Travel, holidays, nostalgia, curiosities and my home town of Blackpool - all with a helping of good humour

Sunday, 26 May 2013

2013 Reading Part 3

Another 8 books have been devoured - helped by a holiday which we have just returned from - more news about that shortly no doubt - wading through not only my photos but the 1400+ that David took... Enough material there for around 350 blog posts...

Anyway - on to the books!

First up was the first of the Bernard Cornwell books on Thomas of Hookton, the English archer whose career through the Hundred Years War (presumably not all of it...) we are about to embark on. Once again there is a new book out and I wanted to remind myself of the story so far. Another two books to go before I can read the new one! In this, Thomas whilst fighting on the English side, he finds a French girl and both an ally and an enemy on the French side who are related to him.

The first of Jasper Fforde's hilarious Thursday Next novels. This is good, but the series really gets motoring with the next one. Set in their own world, this book only tinkers with the idea that book characters can find something else to do when they are not actually being read by anyone.

One of my Dad's sci-fi collection, I loved this as a teenager for obvious reasons, but the story is a good one also!

Julian, Dick, George and Anne, not forgetting Timmy the dog, go off on a hike for a long weekend solving not just any old jewellery heist but finding a haul of royal jewels hidden at the bottom of a lake. Enid Blyton's books are full of jolly farmers' wives always ready to cut up countless loaves to make sandwiches and bands of ruthless, totally stupid criminals. Dick... don't do that... it's not nice and it's not clever...

A new author to me and a previously unread series about King Arthur (please see shameless self-promotion of my own King Arthur book in the left side panel...) This rather concentrates on Guinevere's part in the proceedings and the bloodthirsty bits are mainly missing or sanitised. It was a good story, but perhaps aimed at the female persuasion maybe. I might be tempted to read the next but probably only if every other of my favourite authors pop their clogs unexpectedly and new books dry up.

Again, an author new to me - I spotted this one in some promotional stuff sent by the publisher of my Blackpool book (see left side panel for shameless self-promotion) and found it choc full of stuff I didn't know. There's not a great deal of countries out there that we haven't invaded at some time or other, though some we have entered only to help the population fight off other invaders. This is a simple A-Z list with some bare details about each one, so a little episodic - if that is an actual word...

The third Elizabethan murder mystery starring the exiled Italian heretic Giordano Bruno. In this he goes off to Canterbury to try to clear the name of a woman he had once loved. Once there however he finds himself embroiled in yet more murders and a plot to restore the Catholic faith to England. Number four in the series is due out next year. I'll be waiting...

I recently downloaded the entire Sherlock Holmes works to my kindle for absolutely nothing, free and gratis, putting even the Pound Shop to shame... This is the first of those vintage tomes and introduces the reader to the know-it-all Holmes and his sidekick Watson - not as bumbling as you might imagine from some of the films. You forgive Holmes his foibles and for being good at everything as he is just a touch entertaining along the way! He solved the mystery too...

I seem to have loaded the Kindle with enough books to get me through the next year or so... I haven't forgotten the other series I started and haven't finished but have gone off at a few tangents instead this time. I'm sure we will return to the likes of Sudden and the Wheel of Time etc...

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